Spice & Wolf II (14 page)

As soon as she heard it, the wave that hit Holo became a tsunami on its way back, and she exploded with laughter.

“Mmph...bu-ha-ha-ha! Oh, oh, that’s too good! Oh! Ha-ha-ha-ha!” Holo was doubled over, clutching her stomach, as she laughed, trying occasionally to stifle it only to dissolve into giggles yet again. Eventually her face turned red and she pitched forward into the pile of armor in the wagon bed, her pained laughter continuing.

Lawrence joined in at first, but as he saw more of Holo’s reaction, his expression darkened.

Her tail, fluffier than normal thanks to its recent grooming, slapped against the wagon bed, almost as if begging for help.

“Okay, that’s too much laughing.”

It was no longer funny.

“...Ye gods,” Lawrence muttered, taking another drink from the water flask, as if to wash down both the irritation at being laughed at, as well as the embarrassment he now felt for quoting a minstrel of all things.

“Haah. Whew. Oh...oh my. That was amusing.”

“Are you quite done?” inquired Lawrence with a sigh, looking off to the sun that now sank into the horizon. He didn’t much feel like looking at Holo, mistake or not.

“Mm. That was quite a trump card you had there.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lawrence saw Holo nestled atop the pile of armor, her laughter-fatigued face angled toward him.

It was as though she was exhausted after an all-out sprint.

“Well, as long as you’re happy now.”

No matter how much she hated shepherds, Holo’s foul temper had been a bit too foul, Lawrence felt. It was hard to imagine that she was actually jealous of the conversation he’d had with the girl, nor was it true that she’d had absolutely no opportunity to groom her tail.

For a moment he wondered if it was simply shyness, but then he recalled their first meeting and decided that was entirely impossible.

“Hm? Happy?”

The wolf ears of the individual in question—which had become uncovered when she collapsed in laughter—now pricked up curiously as she regarded him with tear-blurred eyes, as though he had said something quite strange.

“You were in a foul temper earlier—because you couldn’t tend to your tail, you said.”

She seemed to remember something.

“Oh, quite,” she said, her face calm.

She hauled herself up off of the cargo, then plopped herself back down, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes.

Looking at her now, Lawrence thought she could not care less about whether or not she had sufficient opportunity for tail grooming. Had that just been an excuse to vent her irritation about something else entirely?

“Can’t be helped,” she said.

The tip of her tail slapped lightly against the floor of the wagon.

“Anyway, your trump card made me laugh so hard I turned giddy,” said Holo, chuckling at the memory. She then looked outside the wagon. “Is the child not cold, I wonder?”

Her observation brought Lawrence back to the present. The sun was mostly down, and the sky was a darkening blue. He had best build a fire.

He had heard that shepherds didn’t generally build fires,

I thought that was because they had to watch over and chase down their sheep, not out of any particular resistance to cold.

Lawrence mused on this as he looked at Norah, curled up on the grass’s paltry cushion.

He felt a sudden movement near his mouth and turned to find Holo thrusting a piece of jerky in his direction.

“Payment for your services as a jester.”

“Only one piece of jerky for such laugher?”

“Oh, you don’t want it?” taunted Holo, amused. Despite his embarrassment, Lawrence decided to accept the offering.

—but his teeth closed on air. Holo had drawn her hand back at the last moment.

The wisewolf snickered; Lawrence realized that going up against her was a fool’s errand. If she decided to be so childish, he could only ignore her.

If he didn’t build a fire soon, then they would all be eating dinner in the cold. Lawrence moved to get off the wagon, but Holo grabbed his sleeve and drew near.

Lawrence’s heart skipped a beat.

Her eyelashes still had traces of tears in them, which caught the red light of the setting sun.

“I do think, from time to time, that some raw mutton would be nice—what say you?”

With the mournful bleating of the sheep echoing through the twilight air, Holo’s words—spoken through her ever-keen fangs—could not have been entirely in jest.

After all, she was a wolf.

Lawrence patted Holo’s head as if chiding her for making a bail joke, then hopped off the wagon.

Holo’s lip curled in a brief snarl, but she soon smiled slightly and passed Lawrence the bundle of straw, tinder, and firewood.

Chapter 3

Entering Ruvinheigen required passing through two separate checkpoints. One controlled passage through the city walls, and the other was situated out on the main road, which encircled the sprawl of greater Ruvinheigen.

Owing to the heavy traffic in and out of a city this size, one had to obtain a passage document at the outer checkpoint in order t0 pass through the station at the city walls. Legitimate travelers would use the legal routes into the city, obtain proper documents, and pass through the walls—any who lacked the passage document would be turned away on the spot.

The checkpoints also provided some degree of control over the inevitable smuggling and counterfeiting that large cities attracted.

The road that Lawrence and his companions took was evidently less traveled as their checkpoint—while not exactly crude—was rather simpler than checkpoints on more common routes, and the guard there seemed to know Norah. Using some strange power, she guided her sheep through the purposefully narrow checkpoint gate, and Lawrence followed after having his wares inspected.

The plain checkpoint stood in sharp contrast to the grand, august walls of Ruvinheigen.

It would be completely impossible to breach Ruvinheigen’s walls without control of the surrounding areas. Walls of earth and timber were spoken of with pride in other areas, but here a barrier of stone surrounded the city with lookout towers positioned at regular intervals. Ruvinheigen was nearer a castle than a city, and Holo let out an involuntary gasp of wonder as they regarded it from a convenient hill just past the first inspection point.

Just outside the walls were cultivated fields, and between the fields, roads stretched radially out from the city.

Here a group of pigs was driven by a farmer; there a long merchant caravan was visible. Farther in the distance, a white carpel moved slowly over the ground—probably a flock of sheep sonic shepherd had brought to pasture. Shepherds with flocks numbering over one hundred were not rare, but this shepherd was likely biding his time before finally bringing his sheep into Ruvinheigen to support the city’s consumption of meat.

Everything about the place was extraordinary.

Lawrence and his companions descended the hill and took one of the roads that ran between the fields.

The city was so large that from the hill it had seemed close, but traversing the distance took some time. Norah had to be care ful that her sheep didn’t eat the crops growing at either side of the road. At length, the group was close enough to make out the designs on the city walls.

At this point, Lawrence carefully produced two silver coins and held them out to Norah.

“Right, then, here’s your forty
trie
.”

Trie
were simple copper coins. However, that many coins would be unwieldy, and Lawrence reckoned that the two silver coins he gave her could be exchanged for forty-five
trie
.

He had paid Norah extra because he felt indebted to her. He and Holo had been fortunate not to encounter any wolves, but Lawrence was still impressed by the girl’s skill. Even Holo would concede it, and it was easy for Lawrence to see Norah distinguishing herself in the future. The extra money was just an investment to that end.

“Er, but, if I exchange this, won’t it come to more than...?”

“Call it an investment,” said Lawrence.

“An...investment?”

“Now that I know such a skilled shepherd, I might be able to turn a surprising profit on wool,” said Lawrence in a purposefully greedy tone. Norah laughed and grudgingly accepted the two silver coins.

“We’ll be at the Rowan Trade Guild for a while. If you’ve plans to take your flock afield again, come by there first. I might be able to introduce you to a merchant in need of escort.”

“I shall.”

“Oh, one last thing. The area where you can provide escort—is it just the route we took?”

“Er, I can go as far as Kaslata and Poroson. Oh, and also to Lamtra.”

Kaslata was a remote town with little to recommend it, and Lawrence was surprised to hear Norah mention Lamtra. Lamtra was one of the few places in the area not under the influence of Ruvinheigen, which controlled the rest of the region. It was not so very far north from the great city—Lawrence and his party could have gotten there by heading north from the midpoint of the road they had just taken. However, reaching Lamtra required passing through a dark and eerie forest, which even knights blanched at, so it had long resisted invasion from Ruvinheigen and was the only city where significant numbers of pagans still lived.

All the legitimate routes to Lamtra were incredibly roundabout, so Norah must not be suggesting she could provide escort along them. She clearly had confidence in her ability to navigate the forest.

If that was true, there were many merchants who would want to go with her.

“Lamtra, eh? I daresay you’ll have some business,” said Lawrence.

Norah’s face lit up. “Thank you very much!” she said, bowing low as if she was still living in an almshouse.

“My pleasure. Well, then, I’ll be entering from the southeast gate, so here’s where we part ways.”

“Certainly. I hope we meet again,” said Norah.

Lawrence nodded and reined his horse to the left as Norah rang her bell. Ruvinheigen was large enough to have no less than seventeen great gates. Between those were smaller gates used for large groups of sheep and other livestock, which Norah would have to use.